from the things-unseen dept

Unintended Consequences

My favorite posts from this week are definitely the ones highlighting 'things unseen'. Many people have been raised on the idea that, for any problem that exists, there must exist some perfect law that the government can create to solve it; and, further, that our governments exist solely to find these laws and bring them into force for no other reason than to benefit the citizenry. Never mind that many of these problems were created by bad laws in the first place: this time perfection will be had and everything will be fixed, as if by magic.

Security through Inanity

For instance, why leave e-security up to companies that will just give up their customers' private information willy-nilly due to the otherwise high costs of protecting it? Certainly, the government will do better than the selfish corporations who clearly have no incentive to be secure! (Because, of course, the silly populace will still flock to sites that are known for constantly turning their customers into victims.) Well, South Korea knows better, and made sure that their citizens were protected.

Well, at least protected from using a free/libre OS like GNU/Linux for e-commerce (or indeed any OS other than Windows) since that wouldn't make any sense, would it? I mean, Microsoft is just a big, evil, monopolistic organization, so clearly there's no better way to protect people from them than to give them a de facto monopoly on the browsers that people use, as well as the websites that sell them stuff. Oh, and even on non-commerce sites because (due to the fact that IE is required to do any sort of shopping online) most average users will just end up using IE for everything.

Imitation: the Sincerest Form of Getting Sued

Few deny that Apple has made some of the more aesthetically pleasing devices that end up in people's hands these days, and, certainly, not allowing people to simply copy their designs should lead to more desirable designs from their competitors. And you don't have to look any further than the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone to see how well this works in practice. Oh, look at those non-black borders, the slightly asymmetrical shape, and that glorious blobbiness!

Yes, this is clearly a demonstration of how important it is to allow Apple to protect the small team with minimal imagination enormous creativity and investment necessary to come up with a rectangular device with a screen and black borders; and how much innovation the public as a whole gained by forcing another manufacturer to ever-so-slightly deviate from what is an immensely obvious and easier-to-produce innovative design. After several iterations of this method, we can certainly expect to see more awesomeness! Imagine, some day we may have phones shaped like the Mandelbrot set turtle, all because we have laws to lead us.

(Hey, the e-Turtle Phone is gonna be big! Hit me up if you want to invest.)

Win One for the Future

And who could forget the ill-fated SOPA and PIPA that, if passed, would have provided "tools" for the government to "use" to protect us from stuff, since certainly it doesn't already have the authority or power to do what it needs to do to protect big media's our interests. So, fortunately, we now have CISPA in the works, since we all know that absolutely nothing could ever possibly go wrong with this law. Sure, privacy was great and all, but... Pirates! Child Porn! ANARCHISTS!Sometimes you gotta kill a few dolphins to make tuna salad, y'know what I mean? It's not like, as a whole, folks aren't already giving most of their privacy away anyway, via Facebook and other sites. So it's just pretty much admitting to the inevitable anyway, right?

Final Dirt

I unfortunately don't see a quick fix here. The governments and corporate interests will continue to behave badly, and the rest of us will likely find little enough marginal utility in protesting whatever the latest, greatest law is that we won't have the collective power to stop it, much less the power to reverse already long-standing law and precedent. (Well, unless we can find a way to have as much impact on the average citizen as when Wikipedia supported the protests against SOPA.)

But my guess is that, as happened during SOPA/PIPA, government will overplay its hand. The youth and other technically-savvy folks can see through the BS better than the average politician can understand what makes us tick. We've already been seeing an uptick in support for radical ideas of liberty which seemed practically dead in the 1990's and early 2000's, and I think the SOPA protests were a great initial volley in the fight to bring back some sense to things.

One way or another, the multitude of poor decisions being made are unsustainable, and on the day that we do collectively take action, I think a lot of politicians are going to find the real meaning of unintended consequences... right before they start to look for another job.

Still, my point stands: there is conflicting evidence, and holding a minority opinion does not justify calling someone a 'loon' IMO. Also, I've seen no dissent about the finding; perhaps you know something I don't? I couldn't find the paper or I would have posted that instead.

Furthermore, no need to assume that someone pointing out evidence against a particular opinion held dear is an adversary, nor to direct vitriol my way. I would have loved to have had an actual discussion here. And, in fact, the thing that you so strongly seem to need to deny, that the vaccines themselves have caused mutations due to environmental pressures similar to overprescription of antibiotics, actually isn't that surprising, but more importantly, you could have simply argued that *even if true, it doesn't mean we would have been better off not having the ability to make people resistant to it in the first place.*

Whatever. I will never again make the mistake of thinking I might actually be able to show that there's enough evidence out to warrant saving the name-calling for people that believe the moon is made of green cheese. (Well, for that matter, I'd just give the evidence against, and I would answer any objections, and forget trying to convince someone that won't be convinced. Like now. And, no, for those of you with a mental block preventing seeing the rest of what I've posted if you see a point to be scored, it's not trying to convince you that vaccines are bad, mmm'kay.)

Of course, I'm assuming since you talk with such an air of authority, you can provide a link to that paper, so I can review it myself more closely? Great, thanks.

Ahh and the desire to score points for one's personal opinions triumphs again. And, as I stated elsewhere, I actually have my vaccinations, and if I were ever to have kids I would probably have them vaccinated. I wouldn't ever advise someone not to have their kids vaccinated.

And in seeking to show that the name calling was not justified by the evidence out there, I have been now been soundly thrashed by those who think that scoring a few quick points by calling someone names and not bothering with all that pesky argumentation stuff that requires all that research and evidence, when clearly having thought about it for a bit of time here and there off and on, and having come up with something plausible gives one the right to say someone is loony for having found some other thing plausible given the evidence they've seen.

> Do you always feel an urgent need in public> forums to repeatedly post over and over again,> in a futile attempt to drown out other opinions,> rather than actually countering them?

Well, since I did do my best to counter them, not sure what you're talking about.

And 'to drown out other opinions'? That's a laugh. Seeing as how I was trying to present the side of the case, and pretty much everyone here was not even bothering to try to 'counter', for instance, the (perfectly reasonable) argument that pressures within an environment are causally related to the eventual mutations that survive.

Oh, and I think it's funny that without any sort of reasoning or evidence, you state that I'm cherry picking; which, I wasn't, as I wasn't trying to present a full case showing that flu vaccines are overhyped and have potential dangers that are typically ignored in the widespread campaigns to get people to get vaccinated.

However, I *was* trying to show that there have been articles published in peer-reviewed journals, including one systematic review paper and one public policy statement in the BMJ formerly "British Medical Journal", "a weekly open-access peer-reviewed medical journal [...] described as among the most prestigious" according to Wikipedia, and offered this as at least one example where vaccination was believed, by at last some of those in the actual field, to be overdone, and not of any benefit.

And to date, I still haven't seen anyone present any evidence that these supposed pandemic-causing mutations have happened, or are likely to happen, or that the risk of such somehow outweighs the risk of complications of giving your infant a cocktail of vaccinations when they're born. (And at the risk of repeating myself, since I know that everyone will feel the need to jump down my throat, I would probably do it anyway.)

All if this in support of my contention: not, that anyone should or should not get vaccinated; or what the final truth is about them, etc. but simply that calling people 'loons' is far from what a civilized discussion should include, whatever one might feel about the ultimate answers.

[ shakes head ] So, Timothy. You mention your disagreement with those who think that climate change isn't primarily due to humans up top, but then (I am assuming in order to distance yourself further in case people missed that disclaimer?) you decide to compare them to people that say the moon landings didn't happen, that Hitler was fighting lizard people and now runs world government, and 9/11 was faked with a holographic light show to allow W. to land on a carrier in a flightsuit. Then, you follow it up by saying that way you know to keep your kids away from them.

Would you mind clarifying, please, why you feel the need to take an article standing up for free speech and turn it into an ad hominem against those who with whom you disagree on an issue? Do you really feel that those who believe climate change might have significant causes other than human ones are in the same category as all those other strawmen you put up?

And frankly there are lots of nuanced opinions between "humans are all rainbows and lollipops for Earth and never ever ever cause damage" and "it's likely that the significance of human action on environmental damage is at least somewhat overblown due to the benefits people receive from being on 'the right side'" and "climate change is real, but I have no idea whether humans are causing it, and even so government involvement will (as always) misdirect the resources that people who care would be putting towards doing something about it anyway." Could you please speak to which of these positions it is that would cause you to want to keep your kids away from someone holding it?

Your debate tactics, I'm sure, score a lot of points with people that feel like you do, but they sure turn me off. Part of what's tearing people apart today is this adversarial tit-for-tat argumentation, which has been perfected by the politicians, big businessmen, and pundits. And frankly, you're dragging Techdirt down by putting that bullshit here.

Not sure how this is the 'core' of anything, since it's likely that lots of people would avoid vaccinating their infants due to the uncertainty as to the reason that vaccination is strongly positively correlated with infant death without any regard to that study or that person... It's posted elsewhere in the thread. Why am I still here? Had hope people might actually try to see another point of view here (not even mine, just one I can at least understand). Clearly too much to hope for.

... as I stated elsewhere, I don't personally believe that someone has the right to decide that, because of general risk statistics, someone must choose one risk over another. To me, it's rational that someone might choose the risk of dying from an illness later in life over the risk of dying from a vaccine as an infant... The risk of which there is plenty of evidence, whether you have taken the time to find that out or not; feel free to educate yourself, you could start with the NIH study that I provided, for instance...

It seems to me that the thing requiring absolutely compelling evidence (e.g. many good studies showing the thing you are positing with little evidence against, over a period of time, and, not only that, but then the same kind of evidence showing that the thing that might happen is as likely and severe as posited) would be the making of such laws, rather than someone else having to convince you or others that it's *not* the case.

Otherwise you're basically saying you or other should have the power to make anyone do whatever they want by simply saying "hey we had our scientists look at it, and we think that this will happen and it's very very dangerous, we promise. oooo, everyone gonna die." And that's my problem with the whole theory.

It's quite likely that the vaccines themselves do cause death. I suppose you missed the rest of the comments or are still insisting on the semantic argument that the receiving of the vaccination (active material PLUS medium) is somehow not as important as the fact that you believe it to be only the actual active material in a vaccine that matters, whether or not the vaccine as a whole is actually killing infants.

And again, there's no evidence for your thesis that I've found (that death associated with vaccinations is only due to other things, and not the active medium itself.) To repeat myself one last time: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/ finds that there's an associated risk and encourages more research, precisely because they do not KNOW why.

"Even if it would be desirable in this case (which I have given a fair amount of reasoning against in the comments) once you generalize it and give power to someone to restrict people, history shows that government will, in the long run, make decisions solely because they benefit the government or the people within it in some way, or based on factors that are still in disagreement in order to be seen as proactive and doing something in the face of what people perceive as a threat."

No, first off, you are cherry-picking the article to say what you want; the article is clear that (a) the actual vaccines in use have been in large part responsible for the mutations that have been found, and (b) "listening to people like" me had nothing to do with these decisions, they were made by scientists and researchers who were quite worried about the actual adverse events from the vaccines that existed and were frequently causing severe problems like, oh, death.

Besides, that wasn't my only point. My point is that decisions like this are made all the time, and the very vaccines that people have been avoiding getting are those causing the issus... These new vaccines were introduced because of the adverse events being seen as unreasonable in the first place.. had nothing to do with the "people like me" (who is that BTW, people that look at the scientific evidence and present it without judging those that come to different conclusions?)...

And that regardless of your feelings on the matter, decisions like this are made left and right by people making the vaccines, and it's likely that at any point in time the reduced-strength vaccines are causing these issues as evidenced by the fact that so many current vaccines are exactly this type. Besides your reasoning basically equates to "fuck anyone who decides to avoid the much increased risk of their baby dying with the original vaccines, because we have potential future issues that may cause even worse things, even though up to this point the scientific evidence pointed to there being far more danger in the present, and even though up to this point there's been no evidence of a mutation of the severity which I from my lay background and hour worth of study believe could justify it."

Besides, it's pretty clear that environmental pressures to mutate in a way to avoid vaccines come from... vaccines. Significant populations do indeed give viruses the opportunity to mutate, and there is a chance of it being a way to avoid the vaccine, but it's far less likely to mutate in that way in such a population.

Besides, again, please give any evidence of a mutation of this kind that has been dangerous enough to justify the types of enforcement proposed; and please give us a rationale for and way to ensure that this type of enforcement is only used for things that are indeed that dangerous.

And I think that's my biggest point here... The type of rationale necessary doesn't actually exist in an enforcable way, and it's easy to find many cases where either initial studies go the opposite way than the later ones and many reasons that the powers that would have to exist would not be able to make them in a rational way anyway in part due to the fact that decisions would be made on insufficient evidence due to alterior motives, or simply due to the fact that in this type of position you will get totally reamed for deciding not to do something, but generally an incorrect decision will either go unnoticed or given a "well, they were just doing their best" anyway...

And that was my point. Even if it would be desirable in this case (which I have given a fair amount of reasoning against in the comments) once you generalize it and give power to someone to restrict people, history shows that government will, in the long run, make decisions solely because they benefit the government or the people within it in some way, or based on factors that are still in disagreement in order to be seen as proactive and doing something in the face of what people perceive as a threat.

Must stop reading now, you don't need me to make these arguments, the science is there, and frankly, I'm not invested enough in this to spend the rest of the night responding to people that seem more interested in a "quick win" than any discussion around whether the current evidence supports draconian governmental policies.

Sorry, the study was adjusted for those types of things, as is most... Just think any evidence against your beliefs must be wrong, and then look for what you think sounds plausible? Maybe try actually reading the paper, I gave a link. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/

Oh, for that matter looking at it I can see I put the final conclusion which even talks about the statistical adjustments made and the overall correlation of these types of deaths and the number of vaccines given; so it even says right there that this study didn't suffer from the flaw you claim.

Why the need to react and respond instead of actually just reading what's right there in front of you?

Sorry, I definitely give up now; I don't think there's anything at all I can add if not only people believe that "the government not keeping people from making free choices when there's not even a scientific consensus" can equal "oppression" (paraphrased and interpreted) but people claim that "duh, study must be flawed in X way" when the quote I give from the study say "this study was not flawed in X way".

To reiterate one last time: I'm not arguing that you shouldn't get vaccines. I'm arguing that the belief that you shouldn't is far from being an unreasoned belief, or one that means someone should be considered to be a "loon".

Thanks to anyone who actually bothered to read the information I gathered in order to show that it wasn't as cut and dried as people seem to think. :) o/

Okay, so please tell me, what is the threshold? What types of evidence are necessary to justify turning freedom on its head and using newspeak to turn the freedom NOT to do something into opression?

What of the fact that there's good evidence for the opposite conclusions, that, in fact, that the very vaccines that are given are what have the environmental pressures that will cause such mutations? Or the fact that such mutations haven't ever resulted in widespread pandemics that killed lots of people, as oppposed to the vaccines themselves?

Who are we going to entrust this decision, on what is clearly a very dangerous power(the power to decide that the freedom to not do something is actually somehow opressing other people) to? The same governments that decided that they could re-word laws in order to allow them to collect data on pretty much everyone in the US in secret, without any sort of real review of it until someone put classified documents showing how bad it was in the public eye?

And what sort of pressures shall we use to make sure that only the most dangerous things are protected against, and that the evidence showing the thing in question is actually to blame?

As your response that basically says we should have a government with this kind of power has been deemed insightful, I'll refrain from further comments. Again, I personally am vaccinated, and if I had kids, I'd probably take the risk for them too.

I have basically just tried to show in various comments now that: (a) the study of the question (the likelihood of the choice of people not to vaccinate actually causes mutations) is far from conclusive and there's good evidence not only against the thesis, but even supporting its opposite, and that (b) even should such a mutation occur, there is no good evidence that it would be severe enough to warrant the types of penalties suggested by OP Timothy, or those of you in support of such draconian measures.

So, given that people here think that "Not doing anything has it's oppressions" and that the government should have the power to force people to do things not only against their better judgment but on very dubious scientific grounds is 'insightful', I have nothing further I can add. If you care to learn, there is lots of info a google away. Make your decisions based on that, not on groupthink and newspeak put forth by those who believe the government should have this kind of power over our lives and choices.

When you don't wear a seatbelt, as I mentioned, it's also endangering people. And frankly, I have no problem with people being held liable for things that are *almost certainly* going to cause accidents such as if someone were to choose to not wear glasses while being visually impaired enough to make such an accident probable.

What I do have a problem with is forcing people to do things on the outside chance of a worst-case scenario that someone can think of happening for something, especially when such arguments can be used to justify practically any government intervention.

You can look elsewhere in the comments if you want more in-depth justification of the following, but here it is: (a) there is good evidince that the standard vaccines given to infants cause many of them every year to die, and (b) there has never been a mutation of an almost-eradicated pathogen coming back due to people refusing vaccinations for themselves or their children that has caused anything near the likely number of infants to die from it as the vaccines likely kill themselves and (c) it's not at *all* clear that *not* being vaccinated causes this kind of mutation anyway, as the environmental pressures are not there in those cases, but instead in cases of the very vaccinations that were refused in the first place.

yes, and it's a very strong conclusion that not only overstates the likelihood of it happening, and I've responded to it elsewhere in the comments... basically it's not so cut and dried, and, in fact, environmental pressures to mutate in a way that can negate a vaccine do tend to happen: but generally not from not vaccinating (since there are no pressures that specifically select for vaccine invulnerability in that case) but from the 'safer' vaccines that tend to come out after a while due to the widespread adverse events coming from those that are more efficacious (because vaccination of any sort provides exactly the right pressures to cause such mutations).

Anyway, I think that sums up what I mean... But hey, the thing that drives me nuts is that there is plenty of research into this, and plenty of resources, all just a quick googling away, which show that *at the very least* that your conclusion is arguable, and in fact that it's at least possible that the conclusion (as often happens in science) is exactly the opposite of the correct one...

Regardless, say it were true and that these mutations are more likely from not vaccinations. I don't believe in safety at all costs, and just as I would rather have a free society even if it does cost us *some* safety to have such things as due process, protection against unreasonable search & seizeure, etc. And in the same way, I believe that the benefits of living in a free society far outweighs any interest that someone may have in maybe preventing a possible mutation event that creates a pathogen that theoretically could be dangerous enough to cause what has a chance of becoming predominantly fatal or debilitating, and that also may spread quickly enough and in the right way to allows that small of any pathogen becoming a widespread pandemic...

Umm, yes, the vaccines are created by actual live pathogens that are speculated to be the ones that might be the actual pathogens that will take hold in the next flu season.

And these vaccines actually cause worse adverse events in the young and elderly, and, as I stated, there are medical papers in peer reviewed journals such as the ones from the BMJ (not the only ones I've read, just the only ones I remembered off the top of my head for not mincing words about it) that over 5 years ago were (a) stating exactly what I stated, that the pathogens aren't even necessarily or likely the ones that will go around, they're just a guess at such and (b) concluding that whatever beneficial effect that these vaccines may have, it's likely either negated or outweighed by the *negative effects* they have.

So, basically, you are simply repeating things that have been questioned by experienced physicians and researchers and shown to have a high likelihood of being incorrect.

(Oh, and please notice that I avoid saying things like "such-and-such article proved" something, rather than overstating what the actual evidence is... Unlike, say, the propogandistic [wait is that a word? if not, then I claim it!!! all you Techdirtians(copr. 2011, Chelle Liberty, all rights reserved; limited licenses available on request) can use it of course...] statements coming from the drug companies, the governments, and the people who bought into what they said due to their propensity to state preliminary conclusions as fact and using fear to push people into doing things that aren't necessarily in their best interests.

If you have a source stating that, indeed, the dangers of vaccination are solely related to allergies, then (a) please give a source so that we may all be so enlightened and (b) please explain why someone must subject their children to dying due to a vaccine without any sort of test assuring them that their kids aren't allergic to the vaccine in the first place.

AFAIK there's no study even close to conclusively saying what you're saying, in fact, elsewhere I quoted a study by NIH saying that it looks like infant deaths are indeed strongly correlated with the degree of vaccination in a country and that they don't know exactly why and suggest that people do a better job trying to find out.

Besides, I'd argue that if someone's infant may die due to the vaccination then it's just pure semantic bullshit to declare that the vaccine didn't do it. You don't even attempt to defend why we should define "vaccine" as "just the active stuff in the vaccine" rather than "the active stuff in the vaccine PLUS the medium in which it's delivered."

And since I figure this will come up over and over--it's not so clear-cut that NOT vaccinating is the problem here, so the "well you're endangering all of humanity" (which by itself is overblown, as there has not been a case of a mutated virus close to eradicated by vaccination coming back and causing any sort of hugely widespread epidemic, much less a fatal one) trope itself is not necessarily even placed correctly:

Yes, that's right, turns out that sometimes vaccines themselves can cause problems (like antibiotics) such as (drumroll, please): mutations in the viruses causing them to evade vaccines. Yes, that's right, actually viruses have little environmental pressure to mutate *until we attack them with vaccines that are less than efficacious* and, of course, the more effective vaccines also are a hell of a lot more likely to cause adverse events such as... your baby dying of a vaccination.

So yeah. It helps to actually look at the evidence *against* your position rather than just assuming you're correct and that anyone that might disagree with you is somehow worth derision and/or name calling.

I think what tweaked me the most was the headline that starts the article with what might as well be schoolyard name-calling.

It's quite insulting. I am a bit pissed off, since I came to Techdirt expecting its usual fare of well-reasoned and logical *arguments* against the stupid bullshit happening in government as it enriches and empowers itself and its friends at our expense, but instead the story that catches my eye is from someone calling people 'loons' and piously espousing a holier-than-thou attitude: even against those who may have decided through logical reasoning (whether you agree that reasoning or not) to avoid the non-negligible risk of their baby dying of SIDS because of a vaccine.

And no, this isn't some crackpot theory: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/ "Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?". Notice the source. TL;DR: Basically, "SIDS" or (as it turns out) later variations on causes of death relating to infant suffocation didn't start to show up until the start of institutionalized programs of infant vaccination.

The article above, on reclassification of possible vaccination related deaths:

"It appears as though some infant deaths attributed to SIDS may be vaccine related, perhaps associated with biochemical or synergistic toxicity due to over-vaccination. Some infants' deaths categorized as ‘suffocation’ or due to ‘unknown and unspecified causes' may also be cases of SIDS reclassified within the ICD. Some of these infant deaths may be vaccine related as well. This trend toward reclassifying ICD data is a great concern of the CDC “because inaccurate or inconsistent cause-of-death determination and reporting hamper the ability to monitor national trends, ascertain risk factors, and design and evaluate programs to prevent these deaths.”29 If some infant deaths are vaccine related and concealed within the various ICD categories for SUIDs, is it possible that other vaccine-related infant deaths have also been reclassified?"

The conclusion?

"The US childhood immunization schedule requires 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year, the most in the world, yet 33 nations have better IMRs. [...] [A] correlation coefficient of 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants. [...] 98.3% of the total variance in IMR was explained by the unweighted linear regression model. These findings demonstrate a counter-intuitive relationship:nations that require more vaccine doses tend to have higher infant mortality rates."

So, I ask this of you, Timothy: please reconsider whether your opinion on this matter is as cut and dried as you think, and whether it makes sense to call people that disagree with you 'Loons' for what is likely for many of them a reasoned position. Why not argue for your case (that the risk of mutations, etc. outweighs these dangers) rather than simply name-calling and assuming your reasoning is the only correct way to think of this.

Or, the vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, which do little to prevent disease (due to being targeted at viruses based upon speculation about what flu *might* be prevalent the next year) and which were debunked as being of questionable efficacy as long ago as ~2005-6? by the British Medical Journal, while being responsible for plenty of *actual* adverse reactions.

Yet, every year, these are pushed hard upon people to further the bottom line of the drug companies that produce them, by a government complicit in the deception.